


La Chevelure

by Chromat1cs



Series: Basingstoke Diaries [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bellatrix uses some heavy slurs, Editor!Remus, M/M, MWPP, Marauders' Era, Mechanic!Sirius, Post Hogwarts AU, Remus really REALLY likes poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9351236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Spring begets the itch to change things, and Sirius thinks maybe 1980 is the perfect year to finally cut his hair. Over the course of several weeks, the universe sends him a couple messages telling him it really isn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I got hit with a flu last week and had to take a bunch of time off work, so when I wasn't sleeping through ridiculous fever dreams I was writing. I read a lot of Baudelaire last year and the man likes hair, so I figured it would be a perfect motif to play around with here.
> 
> I'm moving into a new building this week so the next installment might be a little bit delayed (she says with no upload schedule whatsoever lol hi welcome to the party), but rest assured I have lots more situations knocking around for these two and don't plan on slowing down any time soon!
> 
> The opera bits mentioned in the third scene is this stretch of music from Rigoletto if you're curious for a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2CiGgwt34w  
> (Rigoletto is flawless, the "Bella figlia" quartet they listen to is the most genius stroke of ensemble writing in western history, geek with me about this if you wanna)
> 
> The ending is fluffy, I didn't want to end it with angst, hope you like it! Thanks again for reading, you all are lovely ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

_…Blue-black hair, pavilion hung with shadows,_  
_You give back to me the blue of the vast round sky;_  
_In the downy edges of your curling tresses_  
_I ardently get drunk with the mingled odors  
_ _Of oil of coconut, of musk and tar._

 _A long time! Forever! my hand in your thick mane_  
_Will scatter sapphires, rubies and pearls,_  
_So that you will never be deaf to my desire!_  
_Aren't you the oasis of which I dream, the gourd  
_ _From which I drink deeply, the wine of memory?_

_\- Charles Baudelaire (trans. William Aggeler), “La Chevelure” from Les Fleurs du mal_

—

Sirius stares at himself in the mirror, just beyond waking after a shower on a Saturday that skirts the edges of springtime still crisp with the departing hem of winter. March has always been strange this way—with Remus’ birthday just past in a quiet celebration of chocolate and cigarettes over their kitchen balcony after a night at the pub with James and Pete, and a full moon on the first of the month that went far more smoothly than expected, the few weeks leading into April will feel like hazed glass until _actual_ spring drags itself in with all its rain and mugginess. Yes, it has always felt strange. And it always makes Sirius feel the itch to change something. He slowly runs a hand through the length of his hair.

“Remus, what if I cut it all off?” he tosses over his shoulder as Remus trudges into the bathroom beside him and takes up his toothbrush with bleary routine.

“You won’t,” Remus deadpans through the froth of toothpaste, vaguely charming the steam off of the mirror and the towels back onto their rack. Sirius continues to preen, combing back pieces and holding its length to different shortness against his face.

“I could.”

“You won’t. You’re too vain, love. ’S not a bad thing. But you won’t.”

“Been wanting a change—“

“You’ll waffle about it for a week before settling for trimming half an inch off yourself, and then you’ll complain that it’s shorter than you remember it until it grows back out in a month.” Remus replaces his toothbrush and washes out his mouth before pressing a minty kiss to Sirius’ cheek. “You did this last summer. You won’t.”

Sirius sighs because he knows Remus is right. He's always right, the man should have been a Ravenclaw. He pulls his hair up in a loose fist on the crown of his head, turns from side to side to appraise the nape of his neck and what it might feel like to have it _that_ short, and drops it back down in a fall of crow-black that pools around his shoulders like curtains. It’s shockingly lovely hair, thick and healthy and really, truly black with all the shimmering blue undertones that come with it, and he’s always prided himself on keeping it long—the only good thing his lineage gave to him beyond immaculate skin and cheekbones that could make all the waifish Muggle models weep in jealousy. 

“Stop looking at it like that, you’ll give yourself an emotional hernia,” Remus calls, and Sirius’ cheeks burn again with the combination of adoration and frustration that Remus mixes in him so expertly as he leaves the bathroom for the kitchen. _Should have been a bloody Ravenclaw…_

—

“I almost got a chunk of hair caught in an ignition belt this morning,” Sirius announces from the entryway as he toes off his boots and hangs up his helmet, “it’s definitely getting the chop.”

Scrambling sounds from the living room, cloth on cloth and a book falling to the floor with a heavy thunk, so Sirius rounds over the high back of the sofa and sees Remus sitting up and wrestling to compose the hem of his shirt and half-opened trousers with a heavy flush across his face. A thrill pools in the depths of Sirius’ abdomen and he grins, wide and sly.

“Sorry, you were saying?” Remus says quickly, avoiding Sirius’ predatory gaze as he readjusts his reading glasses and clears his throat. Sirius sweeps in with a gentle stroke to an errant fall of Remus’ curls, brushing them over his ear as his lips follow.

“I want a haircut but never mind that, were you wanking to books again?” he hums, teasing, knowing that’s exactly what Remus was doing and loving him five times through for it. He’s found Remus in similar states of In The Act or Having Just Finished several times since they got the flat, always over 19th-century translations that somehow manage to warp the bastardized palette of English into sumptuous turns of phrase out of their original languages, which is, to Sirius’ delight, absolutely arousing to the better part of Remus’ brain. It’s poetry nine times out of ten—although he once walked into the bedroom after a late shift to see a marvelously worked-up Remus caused by _Anna Karenina_ —so Sirius can’t fault him for having such good taste it makes him hard. Isn’t that the ultimate endgame of aesthetic literature, after all?

“Book, singular.” The embarrassed defiance in Remus’ voice makes Sirius chuckle against his skin as he mouths at the shell of his ear. Remus shivers, already wound tight and foggy, and he lets out a fussy little breath of a groan while Sirius’ eyes flicker to the floor to catch a look at the culprit.

“ _Les Fleurs du mal_ ,” Sirius says, extending the words tantalizingly in all the right places in his impeccable French, one of the only things he never really had to practice in order master, as he reaches down and leans in over the couch to wend his arms around Remus’ torso in a possessive cross. “I knew dear old Charlie always made you the most hot and bothered.”

“It’s a very good poem,” Remus breathes, baring the side of his neck eagerly to Sirius’ wandering mouth, “I’ll read it to you some time when you’re not ravishing me with sweat and chassis grease.”

“Oooh, you’re learning!” Sirius sidles over the couch to lay himself across Remus, their legs tangling automatically as Remus moves his hands up to slide Sirius’ jacket off and to the floor before stretching an arm out to surreptitiously right the fallen book. He buries a hand into the base of Sirius’ neck and bites his lip, looking up at Sirius as he removes the slim reading glasses gingerly.

“You’ll have to remind me though—” a soft moan leaps out of Remus as Sirius presses a thigh into just the right spot along that gloriously unbuttoned fly—“is that the sort that doesn’t stain, or do I need to throw you off right now in search of some detergent?”

“Use a sodding cleansing charm,” Sirius mutters against the naked, freckled shoulder he’s exposed with the soft crawl of pulling Remus’ wide collar aside, and the laugh that thrums along so closely through the cords of his neck pulls deliciously at Sirius’ insides.

If, a half-hour or so later, one had reminded Sirius that earlier in the evening he had wanted to cut his hair off, he would have scoffed dramatically; _This hair? THIS hair? The same hair that Moony used as a bloody anchor when he came so hard he almost choked on my own name? Poppycock._ Splayed on his back amid the nest of blankets and pillows and cushions dragged to the floor along with their insistence, Sirius looks sideways at Remus’ panting recovery and grins.

“Better than Baudelaire?”

“Of _course_ better than Baudelaire, Christ walking, Pads. You’re a madman.” The insult carries all the trappings of the wide smile across Remus’ face. “Don’t cut your fucking hair.”

—

“See there?”

Sirius follows Remus’ gesture to the face of the Winter Gardens, hung brightly with an advert for the dance festival later in the spring. A smiling man in a tuxedo dramatically dips a woman in technicolor skirts, his hair pulled back slick in a curling ponytail. Sirius snorts.

“I know enough about my facial structure to have learned that pulling it all back tight like that is a grave stylistic error.”

“Ah, I was just saying that if you stopped bellyaching about a haircut, you could woo all the pretty ballroom girls here come May.”

Sirius ribs Remus lightly through their elbow hold, light windbreaker jackets rasping together. “Are you a pretty ballroom girl?”

“Twirl me, Padfoot!” Remus cries in joking falsetto, feigning a swoon and pulling Sirius along the waterfront path with a laugh when he moves to bow low in mocking.

The sky above is clear and moonless, stars pricking through the calmness of night like pinholes as the ocean mutters in to their left and the sounds of visitors and locals to Blackpool fill the rest of the surround comfortably. The breeze is gentle, the air smells of salt and the vague collective of restaurants, and the glow of streetlamps illuminating the sparse pathway on which the two men have found themselves is comfortable. Blackpool was the obvious next choice after feeling like Brighton had been thoroughly explored, and it turned out mid-March was the perfect time at which to dive into the fussy little city. _The Brighton of the North,_ Remus had pointed out on a magazine kiosk the other afternoon, and Sirius had shrugged with Sure, Why Not? and as the moon disappeared and they mapped out the proper Floo route, they found they liked Blackpool well enough. It’s an unseasonably not-frigid night for not-yet-April spring, and Sirius is unseasonably happy because Remus is radiant with contentment.

“Path leads down to the ocean, come on.” Remus smiles as he tugs Sirius toward the distant hiss of waves lapping at the stoney beach at the edge of the sloping pathway. The two men pick their way down towards the lip of the water, just close enough to feel the misted spume of breakers but not near enough to dampen their shoes, and stand close at the hip. They are the only two this close to the shore in this weather, and they both shiver with the happy little spasms of enjoying the chill of the ocean air at night but not being quite bundled enough. Remus lets out a joyous chuckle.

“What, are you going to be spontaneous and dive in? That laugh means spontaneity. I’m not going in after you,” Sirius says with exaggerated warning.

“This is just…good,” Remus replies, his teeth chattering gently through a slow inhale against a breeze that makes Sirius turn to hug him nearer for warmth. “It’s good, and I love you.”

Sirius doesn’t think he can ever tire of Remus at his happiest, so willing to let down his ubiquitous guard of codified emotions and careful touches that Sirius has tried so hard lately to coax into freer expressions of feeling. He kisses Remus through a smile, relishing the way he sighs into their ease, and pulls back to rest their foreheads together.

“You’re ‘just good’,” Sirius says, giddy as a child to toss Remus’ simple contentment back at him, and moves to kiss him again when he suddenly catches a bloom of brightness in the dark reflection of Remus’ eyes. He turns to look over his shoulder, back in the direction of the town proper, and his heart leaps into his throat to see the sickly green glitter of a Dark Mark unfurling in the distance above Blackpool. _Here? This isn’t London, what the fuck!_ He hears Remus’ breath catch beside him and draws him closer, protective.

“We need to leave,” Remus breathes, and Sirius nods automatically. They stand apart to draw their wands.

“So much for a quiet night out,” Sirius says over the crush of the next wave at their feet, but Remus is already off in a soft crack of Apparition.

Sirius feels queasy with unease as he casts to zip out and back into existence in the tidy warmth of their flat. Remus has hung his jacket and gone immediately to the tobacco stash on the kitchen counter, wrenching the balcony doors open with one hand when Sirius’ vision locks back into focus. Sirius shrugs his own coat off and throws it over the nearest chair, sitting himself wordlessly in front of their radio and tuning it to the public wizarding channel with a tap of his wand.

_“…and its ever-growing popularity as the Muggle festivals in May draw nearer. Minister Minchum has declined to comment on the Mark above the town earlier this evening, mentioning instead the broader necessity for defensive measures against the battery of dangers mounting against the wizarding world. With the institution of more numerous ranks of Dementors around Azakaban earlier in Minchum’s term, critics have—”_

“Turn off the radio,” Remus says sharply, licking shut a cigarette with preoccupied precision, “the Ministry broadcasts are just fear-mongering at its finest. Put on a record instead.”

Sirius disenchants the radio with a swish and huffs a tight exhale of air. “And which album does the immeasurable Sir Moony request?”

“I don’t _care,_ Pads, just put a bloody record on.” Remus snaps his fingers to light up, leaning out slightly to see the sky beyond the balcony as he takes his first nervous drag. Sirius’ heart pulls, wants to tell him he wouldn’t able to see the grotesque billowing smoke of the Dark Mark from here anyways, but he swallows the obviousness that he knows Remus doesn’t need to hear and pulls the first record from the top of the pile. He sets it on the turntable unceremoniously, smiling wryly despite himself when the billowing sail of the orchestra sweeps in with the familiar declamation of an aria he knows like the sidewalk right outside their building.

As the tenor erupts into the music, victorious and carefree, Sirius feels conflicting worry knot his guts. New moons were supposed to be calm; safe. A fucking Dark Mark was the furthest thing from either. They sit apart and in silence as the record spins, Remus smoking his cigarette down to ash that he flicks into the street below and Sirius worrying at the hem of his sleeve while the Duke of Mantua sings loftily of the comforts of women. A florid eruption of finality wends its way out of the music, and the murmuring exeunt that continues into more ironic rollicking on the record underscores Sirius’ disquiet as he stands to embrace Remus from behind.

“Please don’t be scared,” he whispers, “they can’t reach us here.”

“How do you know that,” Remus says gruffly, a statement, not a question.

“Because I’ll fucking cut them down like parchment if they try and hurt you.” Sirius is surprised by his own fierceness as his fingers tighten in the warmth of Remus’ shirt. Remus seems to hesitate before he wraps his own arms around Sirius’, closely and with ardor. They stand for a moment until Remus lets out a rigid sigh and shifts to shut the balcony doors against the night, moving out of Sirius’ arms. He walks distractedly to the middle of the living room and stops a few feet from Sirius, as if he’s forgotten what he meant to do in the first place.

“Which opera is this?” he asks after another short bout of silence, and Sirius can still see the brightness of worry behind his eyes as he looks over to the record player despite his unsaid push to dispel it.

“ _Rigoletto_ , by Verdi. Good ol’ Joe Green, wrote all my favorites,” Sirius says softly.

Remus hums with recognition. He pauses before taking the short span of steps to close the distance between them and kisses Sirius slowly, emotions muddled, a quiet frenzy of a kiss that Sirius feels is more placeholder than anything. It’s alright by him, any kiss of Remus’ is a blessing no matter its language. He can tell Remus is still shaken; he takes him by the shoulders with tender hands to try and ground him.

“That tenor sounds like you after too much wine,” Remus says gently, and Sirius quirks a smile.

“The only real difference between the two of us is that he’s slept with women.” Sirius counts it as a tiny, glimmering victory against the mounting smog of threatening turmoil that Remus lets out a genuine chuckle at that. As a love-drunk Duke warbles on in an impeccable quartet of lust and loss from the corner of their living room, Sirius lets Remus rest his head on the blanket of dark hair falling across his shoulder while the two of them sway ever so slightly in slow duple along with the music.

—

Sirius treks through London with singular purpose and a spring in his stride. The sun is out for the first time in a week, April has finally dawned with another early moon and the promise of calm, and he's knotted his hair up to feel the rarity of sunshine on his neck. He could get used to this, maybe he _would_ actually cut it all off now that it was getting warmer. A barber shop looms around the next turn he takes, and he smirks at the coincidence— _come now, Lady Fate, no need to hump my leg like that, calm yourself. I can make my own decisions, you minx._

He and Remus have been living together for nearly two full calendar years, so he feels like he should get at least a little something to mark the occasion. He never gave credence to the necessity of a romantic anniversary between them because that means he would have to trace it all back to the most esoteric timeline of adolescence pressed somewhere between 16 and 17 with the strange fine print of But Not Quite Yet. Their progression had been so gradual—so painfully, agonizingly, beautifully gradual—that neither Sirius nor Remus could ever really bother to winkle its first spark out from the countless threads that knit them together. But Sirius finds he’s been softened by love, something he’s somewhat surprised to find he isn’t bothered by, so he wants to mark an occasion. The only occasion he can find that makes any sense is their move-in date, which is still two months away but it’s the thought that counts, so he’s on a mission through London to find something nice. He stops outside of the storefront he had been hunting down for the last five minutes and nods to himself, satisfied, before stepping in through the creaking door.

The antique shop smells like old parchment, and as Sirius looks around he tries to guess how many times Remus has found his way into this exact store each time he’s been in the city for work. The faint smell of a Glamour sitting lightly overtop of the interior tickles Sirius’ nose, and he scrunches his face up briefly in a half-smile when the timid-looking wizard who owns the shop waves vaguely from behind the counter.

“Afternoon! Do you have anything that isn’t a book that a bookish person might like?” Sirius asks, already canvassing the shelves upon shelves of old wizarding trinkets with a discerning eye. 

“Enchanted bookmarks?” The wizard’s voice sounds like damselfly wings. Sirius shakes his head absently, no, Remus always just dog-ears the corners of his pages.

“Perhaps something that might decorate a bookshelf, or a desk?” The shop is packed to bursting; Sirius wonders what could match this shape and feeling for Muggles on the other side of the Glamour.

“Ah, I wouldn’t know off the top of my head, but you’re welcome to peruse.” The cadence of speech this strange little wizard keeps makes Sirius dredge up a splintered semblance of memory of his old relatives, and it knits a muted shiver into the base of his spine that he ignores after a beat. Sirius leaves him with another short smile and desultory nod before ducking into one of the intimidatingly-high alleys of shelves to dig through the guff.

After ten minutes Sirius has found a set of candle sticks that would make Remus wince for their Gothic “charm,” a toadish pair of carved bookends, an ashtray shaped like the 1956 Holyhead Harpies logo, an old flask inscribed with somebody else’s initials that smells strongly of anise, and a broken abacus. It seems the shop is less for antiques and more for junk nobody wanted around anymore, but then again Sirius has always been terrible at separating the two categories. He idles briefly in the alcove of two raking bookshelves filled with more tchotchkes, peering between them in the last hope of finding something interesting, and before he finishes the thought of _Maybe ought to pop back out to the street and just see if there’s a good chocolatier instead_ , his eye lands on a tantalizing shimmer of green.

Sirius moves closer to see the source of the little flash, and he sees an ornate spyglass propped up on a display stand at the back corner of a low shelf, made of pewter and set beautifully with jade and emerald. The lens is a near-perfect circle, winking sprightly in the low light of the shop as Sirius leans closer, slightly dusty with disuse but still quite brilliant. Remus would love it.

As Sirius formulates the idea of _How lucky it isn’t silver_ , victory curling just barely at the base of his tongue in a low hum of intrigue, he reaches out to polish the lens with his sleeve. The lens glimmers, falls slightly askew on the stand, and Sirius grabs it to readjust it and examine the jewel setting around the edge more closely. But he feels his vision suddenly go dim—his ears pop, his stomach rushes into his throat and he barely has time to try and shout a shocked expletive before his surroundings blur in the charge of Apparition. _Portkey? Bloody fucking Portkey in an antique shop?!_

The roar of air past his ears and the sickening twist of travel assault him, and Sirius feels his bones rattling with resistance as he’s dragged out, out, out into the unknown. When he feels himself blink back into existence, it’s with a hard blow to his left shoulder as he crashes into a heavy cabinet of some sort. His vision returns in a blur, dark blur, little light wherever he’s ended up, and he curses to himself as he rubs at his arm. “Fucking bugger hell, what in Merlin’s name—”

“Well isn’t this a _surprise_ , boys!”

Sirius’ heart hammers to a stuttering stop before galloping up to double-speed when the poisonous velvet of that voice clogs his ears. _Bellatrix?_ He whirls around, trying to keep panic from invading his features, to see his cousin looking smug and feline in heavy dark robes. He hasn’t seen her at least six, seven years, and she’s somehow become more severe; her eyes squint slightly, the corner of her mouth twitches, it seems that marriage to that LeStrange basket case has worn even _her_ nerves thin. She stands in a darkened townhouse foyer beside two young men in similar garb— _Rosier? Avery? What the fuck is this?_

“Now how the hell did you find us, you worm?” Bellatrix sings, twirling her wand in slow circles like a crooked black baton. She walks around him slowly, keeping a wide perimeter but clearly sizing him up as Rosier and Avery look on from behind her in poorly-veiled bewilderment. “Looking for trouble? Getting bored wherever you’ve found your sorry self?” She stops, and before Sirius can draw his wand in defense she hexes his limbs stiff a a board to his side and slams him backwards into the wall next to the cabinet he crashed into upon arrival. Sirius bites back a pained shout and glares daggers at the witch; she only smiles with oily arrogance. “Regardless, it is _lovely_ to see you after so long, little cousin.”

“What are you doing here?” Rosier demands, his nostrils flaring with all the adrenal rush of callow authority.

“Look at what he’s holding,” Bellatrix snaps, her eyes still pinning Sirius with a sadistic sort of victory but her voice raised for the men to attend to, “somehow the stupid little lion got ahold of a Portkey.”

“Why the fuck would he have a Portkey to this checkpoint?” Avery demands, and Bellatrix whips her head to the side to face Avery with a snarl.

“Lots of old, bumbling wizards have lots of old, bumbling things to keep track of,” she growls, “and sometimes they let them fall into the hands of other old, bumbling wizards that do _stupid_ things with them!” She turns back to Sirius and twists her wand, which makes Sirius’ chest tighten and squeeze his breath so suddenly that he drops the looking glass to the floor with a clatter and tries to flail his arms to little avail. Through his doubling vision, he sees Bellatrix sneer. “So it’s up to _us_ to take care of the stupid, bumbling garbage that they might bring in after the fact.”

Sirius continues to fight for breath, but he can see that Rosier and Avery are clearly confused and slightly at a loss of what to do. They’re obviously unfamiliar with dealing with Bellatrix, which makes a distant part of Sirius’ mind think _You don’t know the half of it, you bloody newbies_ , wry and angry and confused. Death Eaters? Here, now, of all places, of all times? Through a fucking Portkey? And especially Bellatrix, especially the absolute fucking worst of his forsaken family tree—he fails in keeping back a pained, gritted groan when Bellatrix switches up her hex and bends his left arm into a jagged and pressing angle behind his head.

“Ma’am, perhaps he’s working for Bagnold—”

“He’s isn’t working for Bagnold, you twat,” Bellatrix’s shout is a slap to the stifling air in the room and quashes Rosier’s question like a gnat. “Sirius Black wouldn’t know political action if it offered him a throbbing cock on a platter. This idiot found us by accident. It seems Lady Fate wants _both_ Black brothers dead, now doesn’t it?”

With several quick and violent flicks of her wand, Sirius is deposited forcefully into a rickety wooden chair far too close to Bellatrix for comfort. His limbs are stiff, heavy, and clapped painfully to his sides as if he wore ironclad restraints. He feels sweat beading on his brow and hopes his panicked breathing isn’t audible. _Think, Sirius, fucking THINK, how do you get out of this—_

“I should curse the heart out of you, cousin dearest,” Bellatrix hisses, “wouldn’t that be a perfect example to the recruits? You went to school with them, didn’t you? Probably teased them to pieces just because you _could_ , isn’t that right?” She moves closer, leans in so he can smell the foul sourness of absinth and capers on her breath. He meets her eyes in an electric crash of the anger and stubbornness so inherent in their blood. “You always did have a Slytherin streak in you, Sirius, you can’t shake us off that easily.”

“I’m not in the family anymore, you fucking cunt,” Sirius wheezes, “I’m as good as dead to Walburga and the rest of those inbred hags.”

“Pontificate on the specifics all you want, you traitorous fag,” Bellatrix hisses back, mocking his tone and leaning ever closer, her stare piercing needles through Sirius’ own eyes with dizzying strength, “You can’t bleed yourself out and say you’re different just because you decided to play on the other side of the street. _Crucio!_ ”

Her sudden roar in Sirius’ face the most disorienting shock for a split second, but on its heels, in a swell of flames that swallows Sirius’ entire being from the inside out, the force of the curse crashes into Sirius’ brain and floods him with searing pain that makes his ears ring like church bells. He can almost hear the muted din of his screams beyond the wall of torture, can almost hear Bellatrix cackling madly, but the curse chews through every sense he tries to grasp and only lets him feel agony.

After what feels like hours Sirius is suddenly released, thrown disoriented back into a reality that feels too bright, too sharp around its edges, it hurts him to open his eyes and he gasps for air, frothing spittle dripping out of his mouth as he scrambles to think of how to get his bearings. _Fuck, Sirius, how did you end up here, breathe, don’t forget to breathe, shit—_

“Look at me when I’m speaking to you!”

Something crashes into Sirius’ face, a solid and masculine punch to his left cheek that make his vision burst with spots of light, and when he tries to snarl an insult at Avery, or Rosier, or whoever the fuck was coward enough to punch somebody bound by hexes, it only comes out as an animalistic wheeze.

“Your brother had that same look in his eye when I got to punish him after his first misstep,” Bellatrix jeers from Sirius’ shoulder, balling a fistful of his hair in her hand and wrenching his head around to look at her. Sirius breathes heavily through gritted teeth, his nose dripping blood and making it difficult to draw air, and meets her eyes in the best semblance of confidence that he can manage through the haze of utter pain. “The little rat raised his voice to Karkaroff, and I got to curse him back into submission.”

As if to accent her baiting, Rosier—yes, it’s definitely Rosier, nobody else would be arrogant enough to still wear a Slytherin ring on his right hand, Sirius feels it dig nastily into his jaw with the hit—punches the plane of Sirius’ face exposed to him from Bellatrix’s hold on his hair. Some blessedly clingy part of Sirius brain, still lucid in a far corner, lights up secretly when he feels the force of his body seizing with hurt jostle his wand ever so slightly down his sleeve and towards his palm. He only takes a fraction of a second to realize the plan unfolding for him.

“And yet,” Sirius taunts, “Voldemort still trusted him more than you. Fancy that.” He punctuates his sarcasm by spitting a fat gob of blood into Bellatrix’ face with gross accuracy.

The bloodied witch bellows with rage, wordless, primal, oooh he’s hit a raw nerve, and she swipes at her face with her sleeve before kicking Sirius’ chair to the ground with a crash. The back of his head whips backward, catches itself in a burst of pain against a section of floor luckily carpeted with a hideous purple area rug, and sings briefly with high notes of dull, throbbing soreness. Through the disoriented chaos of the moment, Sirius feels the heft of his wand slide down into his hand.

“HIS NAME IS NOT YOURS TO SPEAK!” Bellatrix is screaming, “YOUR BROTHER WAS A FAILURE TO THE CAUSE AND TO HIS BLOOD!” Avery and Rosier have stepped back, clearly shaken, unsure, heavily lacking in any knowledge of navigating Bellatrix’s temperament. Sirius grits his teeth in effort as he concentrates on forcing his wrist to move, move, _move—_

“I should kill you here, send a message to rest of them!” Bellatrix is standing over him now, looming in the imposing heft of her robes, the mass of her waves of hair, the madness in her eyes smeared across with Sirius’ spit. Sirius keeps his eyes boring into hers as he feels the tendons in his wrist give into movement with a little crack that almost makes him cry out but he swallows like blood. Bellatrix steps closer and a feral grin spreads across her face. “But oh, no; better to let you run, save you for last—” raising her hand for another curse, Sirius grips his own wand and readies the steely intent to depart— “a blood traitor as vile as you only deserves to see his world torn limb from limb before I do the same to _him!_ ”

Sirius sees her draw breath to bellow the spell, doubtless another round of Crucio that would sear his mind to the core, but he jams his eyes shut and grips his wand, praying vaguely that his hand can move enough, and jerks his wrist in a painful turn that yes, _yes,_ hooks him just behind his navel and tugs him backwards through space with a jolt.

His ears are roaring already, so the din of Apparating feels distant and only really wakes him up moments later when he crashes to his hands and knees on wet grass. His breath heaves, stinging gulps that make his ribs shriek in protest around the burning collective of his strained organs. _Get up, you ponce, you have to run._ The same little flare of instinctual wit that had spurred him to Apparate in the first place forces him to his feet despite the pain of moving, and he tears into a run across the dark field around him. Night has fallen already, Merlin, the Crucio cast may have actually lasted hours—he realizes suddenly that he’s sent himself right outside New Forest, _fuck, it’s been months,_ sees the glow of the edge of town a ways in front of him, and forces his legs to move faster to get to the warehouse from which he can Floo back to Basingstoke. At the very least it he doesn’t hear any other Apparating popping in around him, nor does he hear any other footsteps or smell any other wizards closing in, so the only thing he worries about racing back home to safety is his own stamina.

Minutes later Sirius crashes into the warehouse, breathing ragged and desperate and tinged with the taste of blood, but he stumbles into the dilapidated hearth behind an ancient fall of moldering lumber and scoops an addled handful of powder from the jar on top. “The Hippogriff and Harpy,” he rasps, dashing the ashes to his feet and feeling his guts churn as flashing green engulfs him and sweeps him into the little basement of the pub just outside of Basingstoke. He trips out of the narrow fireplace, grabs a bucket propped against the wall, and vomits violently with the buildup of the last several hours. He allows himself a moment of pause, dropping the bucket back to the floor and catching his breath, before he hears footsteps approaching the top of the staircase at the head of the cellar and panics. Without a second thought he forces himself into Padfoot; the dog’s body is far more used to being roughed up, so he snatches the second wind that fills him and barrels up the stairs past a confused-looking barkeep, through the tables on the main floor of a closing pub, and out into the dusky street.

Sirius lets his instinctual direction take over as he darts through the narrow sidewalks and over bridges, tongue lolling out and paws clattering madly on the pavement as he runs. He catches the distant scent of the curry house on the corner of their street, snarls with determination, and beelines through gardens and countless little driveways to finally reach home. When he finds himself skidding to a stop outside of the walkup, having checked already for onlookers and seeing none, Sirius transforms hastily back to two feet and lets out an agonized groan for the burn in his body. He yanks his keys from his pocket, opens the front door, and feels his stomach twist when he looks up and sees their third floor light on like a worried beacon in the darkness.

Before he can finish the excruciating climb to the top floor, the door to their flat opens to Lily looking ready to demand an explanation from him. Her expression shifts instantly to one of dread, and she flies down the flight of stairs between herself and Sirius to try and help him up faster.

“What the hell happened to you?” she whispers fiercely, wary of the neighbors they’re passing through this main stairwell. Sirius lets her take him by the upper arm and winces as he forces himself up the last four steps into the flat.

“Close the door,” he pants, and as Lily shuts the door and locks it Sirius turns to face Remus at the balcony with a cigarette and his face frozen in horror. Before Sirius can say anything, Lily cuts in with a barrage of healing spells to his face that feel like a cloud of angry little butterflies sewing up his split lip and cleaning away the blood—he swats uselessly at the magic, taken by surprise, but it clears in an instant and leaves him in marginally better repair. The ugly black eye developing on his right side remains, but he finds he can breathe through his nose again and his jaw isn’t swollen. He takes a deep, shaking sigh.

“Death Eaters in London,” he says, and Remus crushes his cigarette in mute, shattering anger while Lily utters a low oath.

“How did they find you?” Remus demands immediately, his voice constricted and thick with emotion.

“I found _them_ by accident. Portkey in an antique shop, I was thrown into some kind of—of meeting between Rosier and Avery and Bellatrix.”

“ _Bellatrix?_ ” Remus hastily slams the doors to the balcony shut and covers his mouth with a shaking hand, staring down at the floor for a moment to collect himself. “How did you trip a Portkey, if it’s the shop I’m thinking of I’ve been in there six times and nothing has ever been amiss,” he says with coached evenness.

“I grabbed a—a looking glass, it was tucked into a corner—”

“Lily, thank you for everything, but Sirius and I need to hash this out alone,” Remus interrupts abruptly; Sirius’ stomach drops. Remus isn’t looking him in the eye, he even accepts Lily’s farewell kiss on the cheek while keeping his stare trained on the kitchen tiles. Lily hugs Sirius briefly into a soft little embrace, sisterly, concerned, and she squeezes his hand with a look that says _Owl us later_ , Flooing out in silence that leaves the flat crackling with tension.

“I called her over because I was worried,” Remus finally says, leaning back against the balcony doors but still looking fixedly at the floor. “I thought you were out drinking at that pub you went to last week that Dearborn told you about.”

Sirius narrows his eyes in disbelief, scoffing out a bitter and humorless laugh. “ _Dearborn?_ Remus, what the hell would you have to be worried about that rotten quim? I was out trying to get you a gift—”

“That doesn’t matter, I specifically asked you not to go to London alone anymore with all the rumors that have been flying around, Sirius—”

“Could you at least _look_ at me if you’re going to accuse me of being the crown bastard of Britain?“

“—and here you come back beaten half to death hours after you’re normally home, is it fun being so reckless? Is this just your default setting?”

“Merlin alive, Remus, what the fuck!” Sirius feels exhaustion dueling in him with the frustrated anger, his voice comes out laced heavily with an airy border of raw abrasion. “Is it my fault I fell into a sodding _trap_?”

“I’m not saying the Death Eaters were your fault, I’m saying it’s your bloody fault that you were irresponsible enough to go out on your own into a dangerous city—”

“So now I’m a child, incapable of going anywhere without holding daddy’s hand?” Sirius hears the accidental sneer in his voice and instantly regrets it when Remus finally looks up at him with terrified rage smoldering in his eyes.

“Fuck you, Sirius! Do you understand what this means?! If you had died, I wouldn’t be able to live without you!” Sirius can only look back at him helplessly, silenced by the furious passion in that stare, doesn’t know what to do besides stand there and keep trying to catch his breath again—“I care too much to look the other way now! This is too close to home, I can’t keep pretending this doesn’t affect us, what the _fuck_ do we do?!”

Sirius flounders, tries to find words; “We—we carry on—“

“Oh, get stuffed, Churchill—”

“We keep doing what we’ve been doing, Remus!” Sirius feels his raised voice erupt from his chest like a cough and hears it still the air for a moment as if it were atomic. “You’re happy here, in this life we’ve built, aren’t you?!”

“Yes, but—“

“So we keep living!” His joints ache like summertime and he needs to sit, but he just leans one hand on the kitchen table beside him and redoubles the strength of his gaze on Remus, heaves his breathing in _one-two, one-two_. “The best way to stick it to these twisted bastards is to pretend that none of their fucking scheming or—or _ritualizing_ phases us. As far as I’m concerned,” he gestures with a vague sweep of his free arm, blinks hazily when it feels himself go slightly dizzy, “what we have here is the best defense against any sort of darkness. We can hide in plain sight in this place, do you understand that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time for you? For us?”

“I do,” Remus whispers after a fractured second of silence, seeing the wooziness in Sirius before he feels it himself, catching him by the elbow and leading him to the couch steadily. “I do understand, and it’s the best option we have, and—and I love you so intensely I can barely handle it sometimes, but they _hurt you_ , Sirius. You have to understand how helpless that makes me feel.”

“Operative synonym there being ‘failed to kill.’ I do understand; I’m sorry.” Sirius tactfully omits the fact of Bellatrix’s _Better to let you run,_ avoids the catastrophe of worry that would follow if Remus knew he’d been hit with an Unforgivable, and his headache pounds again as he leans into Remus’ shoulder. He sighs, swallows a shock of emotion that causes his eyes to well up and tries at trembling joviality; “Besides, we’ve only just gotten into 1980, you think I’d give up the ghost before I got to see what Bowie has in store for us?”

But Remus sees through his ruse, somehow feels with all his depthless empathy that Sirius has been wounded deeper than he had ever thought possible, to the familial core of his brother’s memory that he thought he had locked away for good. Remus pushes aside his own worries and collects him in an all-encompassing embrace, lets Sirius dissolve against him with the tears he’d been holding back since escaping the nameless townhouse in London. Remus lulls him with a soft, low voice and doesn’t ask any other questions while he calms Sirius steadily with gentle hands combing through his hair as if he could drag the bitter memories away with each long, slow, loving pull.

—

There is a list of calming sounds that Sirius Black has been keeping in the back of his mind since he was a child. At the top of the list used to be the sound of summer wind whistling through the gap in his window at Grimmauld Place as a small boy, an enticing reminder that an entire world existed, quite possibly full of adventures, if it he could just find a way to wriggle out of his mother’s silvery grip. It was quickly bumped down a few notches the first time he sat alone in the empty Gryffindor common room in front of the crackling fireplace, and the whole list was thrown off kilter the first time he spent the night next to Remus Lupin and heard the gentle draw of his breathing as he drifted off, or the whisper of his head on the pillow as he shifted in his sleep. 

Once they moved into the flat Sirius started a new list of calming things that he could find in their little life, preserving them like snapshots in his mental bank: the mutter of morning routine from the street outside their kitchen window, the low-frequency buzz of the electric current through the record player when they’ve queued up an album, the whistle of Remus’ vintage tea kettle, the sound of Remus barely whispering to himself as he reads in bed next to Sirius late at night.

Sirius turns to lean up on his shoulder, resting his cheek carefully on his hand—the black eye from a couple days prior after his situation in London has faded to a dull purple-green, but he still takes pains to avoid touching it if he can. “Now,” he murmurs, shifting himself up further to lean over Remus’ shoulder and see the pages of the book, “with whom are we dining on words this evening?”

“Dear old Charlie,” Remus says without looking up from the page. Sirius grins and winds an arm around Remus’ chest, pressing his lips to the freckled shoulder under his chin in a lazy kiss.

“Where’s the one that had you so randy last week?” he asks, and he feels Remus smile to himself as he exhales a light sniff of amused laughter. Remus flips forward several pages in the well-loved tome of poetry and smooths his hand to flatten the page on which he stops with purposeful delicacy that should not have been so alluring. Sirius looks at the title and laughs brightly.

“‘ _La Chevelure_ ,’ is that why you didn’t want me to cut my hair?” he teases, squeezing Remus’ ribs lovingly and making him twitch and chuckle with automatic reflex.

“It describes you perfectly, you would agree if you knew the poem!” Making Remus speak in defense of literature has always been one of Sirius’ favorite things to do, starting as a boy when he made a pun on Pushkin’s name in passing and unknowingly launched Remus into a five-minute explanation of the man’s contributions to the artistic identity of the middle 1800s. Sirius thought it was positively brilliant.

“So read it to me,” he hums into Remus’ skin, his mouth still resting gently where he had kissed him. 

“But not in French; this translation is lovely, and you would just laugh at my pronunciation.”

“I love your pronunciation!”

“It’s all shot through with Irish-isms, and this one sounds better in English. I’m reading it in English.” Before Sirius can protest again, oh, he adores hearing the liquid smoke of French rolling off of Remus’ tongue in shades of moss and clover, Remus clears his throat and shifts into a straighter sit with the book propped up on his knees. “Close your eyes.”

“What, so you can do naughty things to me without my knowing—”

“You’d still _feel_ that, you bloody prat, no, it helps with the imagery. Just humor me?”

Sirius obeys dramatically, fluttering his lashes a couple times before letting them fall closed, and nestles closer to the radiating heat of Remus’ shoulder. The weather is a rare sort of warm, they’ve let the bedroom window sit open so their curtains can whisper in and out like soft little jellyfish in the night air, and Remus has taken to Sirius’ program of sleeping shirtless for the night. He smells faintly of toothpaste mint and his unique cinnamon musk through the dark of Sirius’ closed eyes. He lets out a short, preparatory sigh and begins to read.

“‘Oh fleecy hair, falling in curls to the shoulders! O black locks! O perfume laden with nonchalance! Ecstasy! To people the dark alcove tonight with memories sleeping in that thick head of hair. I would like to shake it in the air like a scarf!’”

Remus pays careful attention to the contour of each sentence, respecting the words like royalty the same way he looks after the curves of Sirius’ musculature when they’re together. Sirius feels warmth take root in the bed of his chest.

“‘Sweltering Africa and languorous Asia, a whole far-away world, absent, almost defunct, dwells in your depths, aromatic forest! While other spirits glide on the wings of music, mine, o my love! floats upon your perfume. I shall go there, where trees and men, full of vigor, are plunged in a deep swoon by the heat of the land; heady tresses be the billows that carry me away! Ebony sea, you hold a dazzling dream of rigging, of rowers, of pennons and of masts: a clamorous harbor where my spirit can drink in great draughts the perfume, the sound and the color; where the vessels gliding through the gold and the moire open wide their vast arms to embrace the glory of a clear sky shimmering with everlasting heat.’”

Remus pauses to swallow a shallow breath, and Sirius keeps his eyes closed tight as he presses another slow kiss to the base of Remus’ neck in encouragement; if the way Remus is reading to him now is the same tone of his internal voice, Sirius has suddenly understood how he can so easily be aroused by reading. He draws his body up nearer, laying himself flush alongside Remus’ side. “Keep reading,” he whispers.

“‘I shall bury my head enamored with rapture in this black sea where the other is imprisoned; and my subtle spirit caressed by the rolling will find you once again, o fruitful indolence, endless lulling of sweet-scented leisure!’”

Sirius rolls his hips forward with an unconscious groan, letting the soft and tenuous pleasure in Remus’ voice beckon him through the landscape of spiced perfection behind his eyelids. He hears Remus’ breath catch and slides his hand down beneath the sheets to rest in small, auspicious circles on his hip bone.

“‘Blue-black hair,’” he continues, and is that the tremble of building arousal Sirius hears on the coattails of each word? He lets a low growl thrum in his throat and presses himself again into Remus’ body, feeling a warm twitch in the lower muscles of Remus’ abdomen beneath his right hand, “‘pavilion hung with shadows, you give back to me the blue of the vast round sky; in the downy edges of your curling tresses I ardently get drunk with the mingled odors of oil of coconut, of musk, and tar.’”

Sirius breathes out a light _yes_ when Remus reaches back with his left hand and gathers up a silken fist of Sirius’ hair, tugging lightly just the way he adores. “‘A long time! Forever! my hand in your thick mane will scatter sapphires, rubies and pearls, so that you will never be deaf to my desire!’” Remus suddenly closes the book, sets it in rushed accuracy on the bedside table, turns his body to press chest-to-chest with Sirius and his hand still in his hair, meshing their hips together with a feathery gasp of perfect ardor with the press of the thin fabric of their sleeping flannels. The final lines of the poem are clearly memorized, and Sirius shudders with a thrill when Remus moves to whisper in his ear, nipping first at his earlobe; “‘Aren’t you the oasis of which I dream,’” pressing his hips forward insistently, “‘the gourd from which I drink deeply,’” and again, and Sirius can’t help but plead his name desperately, “‘the wine of memory?’”

The reading is over with sharp inhale from Remus and Sirius receives his kiss with the depth of final punctuation, a possessive and hungry kiss that make Sirius lightheaded in the most glorious way. They deliquesce into Sirius’ favorite kind of sex, a languid and deliberate trading of names and oaths and perfect beauty nested firmly in their acceptance of flawed skin and raw voices. Sirius memorizes and re-memorizes the stretches of his favorite scars on Remus’ body, lets Remus splay his lips and tongue over his own silvery stretch marks from too-fast growth spurts on his back and thighs—poets be damned, _this_ is paradise.

Afterwards they lie in the familiar safety of togetherness, Sirius tucked tight against Remus’ chest just after their breathing has returned to normal. His hair is haloed in gentle disarray around his face, and he smiles to himself.

“Alright, you fantastic berk, I won’t cut it,” he murmurs, and as he feels Remus rock with silent, victorious laughter and pull Sirius closer— _nearer, softer, dearer_ —he thinks that all the turmoil in the world is worth it to hear Remus fall in love with him again and again.

 

— _fin_ —


End file.
